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Finnish Flash: First period, sneaking in from the left wing, firing a quick wrist shot that looks destined to find the back of the net, except Swedish goalie Henrik Lundqvist manages to slide across the crease just in time to get a pad in front of the puck before it crossed the line.

Finnish Flushed: Five-on-three power play, Finns over-working the puck around the zone, Swedes effectively collapsing and choking off the shooting lanes, more room on the international ice for defenders to come out and challenge the point. His teammates are clearly angling to get the puck to their captain, finally succeeding on the set-up. Selanne whiffs.

Finnish Finished: Perspiration dripping down his face, a welt over his left eye, leaning on the railing in the mixed zone at the Bolshoy Ice Dome, absorbing the finality of a 2-1 loss to Sweden in the semifinal of the hockey tournament, his sixth and last Olympics.

In July, Selanne turns 44, the Old Man Winter of the Games.

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No hockey player his age has ever scored a goal in the Olympics. The record will show that Selanne — his country’s greatest ambassador of the sport, even more beloved there than in Anaheim as a Duck — had a goal and an assist in his penultimate game in Sochi, when Finland stunningly eliminated their Russian hosts in the quarter-finals. But there was nothing left for the Finns on Friday against arch-rival Sweden.

“It’s tough,” said Selanne. “I’m more disappointed that we couldn’t play our best game in the tournament, more disappointed in that than the result. Our goal was to play our best game and whatever happens, you can always live with that. I felt we couldn’t do it. I don’t know if the Russian game just took a little extra energy from us.

“I felt we were one step behind many times.”

The primary factor in this outcome was 0-for-5 on the power play, including a 96-second span with a two-man advantage in the first period.

A lesser factor — probably not a factor at all — was that stalwart goaltender Tuukku Rask couldn’t start, laid low by what’s believed to be flu. In any event, Rask was ably replaced by Kari Lehtonen, who stopped 23 of 25 shots, surrendering goals to Loui Eriksson and Erik Karlsson, the winner on a power play shot that squeezed through his legs.

“It’s hard to swallow, but you’ve got to give credit to them,” said Selanne. “They played well and we had our chances. In the first period the power play would have changed the whole thing. And the third period, I think we played our best period, and that’s a good sign. But at this level, you’ve got to play 60 minutes and we couldn’t do it.”

In their historical Olympic grudge-fest, Sweden and Finland have gone head-to-head on 11 occasions, with the Swedes winning half a dozen times, most memorably in their gold medal encounter at the Turin Games in 2006. That added silver to Selanne’s personal trove of Olympic treasure, to go along with a brace of bronze. And he can make it a three-pack in the third-place medal decider against the U.S.

Selanne has already announced he will retire at the end of this NHL season.

“It’s going to be a big game again,” he said. “Recovery time is very short, but let’s try to take what’s left.”

Sweden’s penalty killing was muscular and energetic.

“Huge was the special teams,” said a grateful Henrik Lundqvist, the winning goalie. “It was outstanding. They created some chances on the power play, but 5-on-5 we controlled the game.”

Finland opened the scoring at 6:17 of the second period on an acute-angle shot by Olli Jokinen that went to video replay as Sweden argued it should have been icing when the forward caught up with the puck.

“Just shoot it, it went in,” said Jokinen. “I thought it was going to be icing, to be honest.”

Sweden tied it at 11:39 when Nicklas Backstrom and Eriksson combined on just the third shot of the period for Tre Kronor on the period. Five minutes later, Karlsson’s shot from the blue line bounced off Lehtonen’s blocker and into the roof of the net.

Lehtonen had been partly screened but was dismayed nevertheless.

“I didn’t see it too well, but I could see some of it. I’m not happy about that one.”

At that point, Sweden didn’t know who’d they’d be facing in the gold medal game and were loath to express a preference.

“We’re playing an even better team on Sunday, Canada or the U.S.” said Lundqvist. “I hope we saved our best for last. We’re going to need it.”

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